Learning History at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

When I paint, I must know when to stop. More than once I have ruined a painting by continuing to tweak it, to change this or that. At a certain point, anything more just detracts from the work. I mention this because I read that a Vietnam Veterans Memorial visitor center has just been approved for construction adjacent to the memorial on the National Mall.

The federal commission with final say over monuments and memorials in the nation's capital gave the green light yesterday for the newest addition to America's front yard: a sprawling underground Vietnam Veterans Memorial visitor center that will be constructed between the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.

The center will be the first new memorial project on the coveted Mall since the National World War II Memorial was built. Preservationists, who have wanted to conserve the Lincoln Memorial's grounds, fought the center. But the project was championed by some veterans groups that have long been troubled by the understated nature of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall and want to provide more history and context for its list of more than 58,000 Americans killed or missing in the war. (emphasis added)

Like the war it memorializes, The Wall has been controversial from its very beginnings. It’s lack of traditional memorial iconography disturbed many as did the designer Maya Lin’s Asian ethnicity. Wikipedia has a good summary of the memorial’s history and development. Despite the controversy, the memorial has become the most visited site in Washington.

I have visited three times, in 1983, 1986 and 1988. More than anything else, The Wall is a memorial to equality in death. No rank. No branch of service. Just names: heroes, fools, combat dead, accidental dead, grunts, REMF’s (rear echelon motherfuckers), seasoned vets, new guys, alcoholics, drug addicts, men and eight women. They all served. They all died. More than anything else, The Wall reminds the viewer that war is death. Anything else is eyewash.

My visits also gave me a sense of where my Vietnam service fit in the scheme of things. Looking up the name of one the dead from my company, I was amazed to see how close to the end of the war my service came. My dead comrade is on panel 4-W, only three more panels and another 3,500 or so dead to the apex where the cycle begins again. I knew at the time, I was on the tail end of combat but The Wall makes it so clear. It also makes it very clear that, long after the US decided that it did not want to sacrifice any more soldiers, soldiers continued to die.

The simplicity and equality of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has always appealed to me. That’s why I am disturbed at any change in the wall. A statue and flag were added in 1984. Suddenly, the dead have an image of three combat soldiers. Admittedly, combat deaths are the majority of the names on the memorial but by its nature, the statue excludes the pilots, the nurses, the truck drivers and all the others who died in Vietnam. The Three Soldiers statue did not compromise the original design, it looked to me more like an afterthought compared to the power of those names; I suspect the same of the Womens’ Memorial that was added in 1994. I don’t mean to denigrate combat dead or the women but, in the end, the only thing that matters is all served, some died and many, like me, somehow survived. The names on the reflective black granite say it all for me.

Now a visitor center will offer “history and context”. It will be an underground facility and probably will not change the visual experience but that history and context will add political debate to what has been a site of remembrance and reflection.

Somehow, we just can’t leave well enough alone. Maybe there is a fear that if all we see in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Americans will only know that men and women die in wars. Not a bad lesson as far as I am concerned.